


The Love Slave and the Scientist

by infiniteeight



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Past Slavery, but I totally gloss over the impact of that, nothing traumatic in the fic itself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 12:45:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8714476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteeight/pseuds/infiniteeight
Summary: Jim and his companions have been rescued, but there's work to do before they can truly be free. Dr. McCoy is determined to make it happen, and Jim is glad for that, even if he wishes the doctor were just a little less stringently ethical...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Challenge Event #2 at https://www.imzy.com/kirk_mccoy
> 
> I chose the following cover for my prompt: http://bigmeathammer.com/albumasst/slides/13-1.jpg

Jim always wakes after the others. It’s not that he needs more sleep, it’s that he's more active than they are, and Dr. McCoy won’t let him set an alarm. “I don’t have any right to tell you what to do,” he’d said stubbornly, and he couldn’t seem to accept that Jim _wanted_ to make the most of every day.

So by the time Jim rubs the sleep out of his eyes and sits up in bed, the others are already dressed and talking or reading or watching the screens. There are 24 of them sharing the ship’s bunk room. Twelve men and twelve women, including Jim, all blond-haired and blue-eyed. The Masters had gathered, adjusted, and sold all varieties, of course, but they’d been in other buildings and the ships that had come to rescue them had each taken one building on board. 

(The people from the ships had asked, during the rescue, if they wanted to stay together or be mixed. The others had been too afraid to answer, but after a long moment Jim had managed to ask for them to be kept in their groups.)

Jim quickly showered in the bunk room’s cubicle--he didn’t have to wait, since he was up late--and pulled on the pale blue jumpsuit and black boots that he’d been given. The ship folk hadn’t liked the glittering gold vests and loincloths they’d had before, though they had been allowed to keep the clothes. (No one wore them, anymore.)

The officers and enlisted in the halls recognize Jim now, and nod greetings at him as he makes his way to Dr. McCoy’s lab. He nods back but doesn’t smile, because it makes a lot of them uncomfortable. 

The door to the lab hisses open to admit Jim. He steps inside and Dr. McCoy--Jim would like to call him something else, but Dr. McCoy says it wouldn’t be appropriate--calls out, “That you, Jim?”

“Yeah,” Jim calls back. Dr. McCoy’s face is pressed into the lab’s microscope, which explains why he’d needed to ask. “How are the nanites looking?”

“Just about ready to go, I think.” Dr. McCoy doesn’t pull back from the microscope, so Jim sits down at the station next to him and pulls up the microscope’s video feed. Dr. McCoy could use that himself, instead of the eyepiece, but he says the eyepiece can be adjusted to his exact visual requirements, which makes them sharper than the screen. Jim looked it up: he’s right, but the difference is marginal. It’s just like Dr. McCoy to refuse to given up even the tiniest edge of precision when it comes to his work, though.

The screen shows thirty miniscule machines. Each of them is handcrafted, because this ship doesn’t have the hardware to replicate nanites. They all look finished to Jim, and he realizes after watching for a few minutes that Dr. McCoy isn’t finishing the build, he’s inspecting them. There were only twenty nanites when Jim went to bed yesterday. Dr. McCoy said that they were finished for the day, but it must have taken hours to build the last ten. Jim frowns, but waits until Dr. McCoy is finished with his inspection and leans back from the microscope before speaking: “You lied to me.”

Dr. McCoy jerks around to glare at Jim. (Jim likes that he glares; most of the ship’s crew are so careful with them.) “What are you talking about?”

Jim points to the screen. “You told me you were going to sleep, too,” he says. “There were only twenty of these when we left off yesterday. There’s no way you made ten in the,” he glances at the chronometer, “hour and forty minutes since you were _supposed_ to come on shift.”

Dr. McCoy sighs and sets down the stylus he was using to check on the nanites. “I didn’t lie,” he insists, running a hand through his hair. “I did go to bed. And I lay there for two hours and couldn’t sleep, so I got up and came into the lab.”

“You should have woken me up, then,” Jim says. “I want to help.”

“As long as you’ve got those implants in your head, you can’t guarantee that what you want is what you want,” Dr. McCoy argues. 

Jim groans and throws his hands up. “How many times do I have to tell you that it doesn’t work like that? The baseline settings are to mute negative emotions and instill obedience. They don’t induce positive feelings, not until we’re sold and the client specifies what they want. I was never sold, you came and got me out of inventory.” The obedience protocol is why Jim can’t call the man anything other than ‘Dr. McCoy’, but he hasn’t pointed out that Dr. McCoy had given him that order because he was certain that he’d be sent away entirely if the doctor realized what he’d done.

Dr. McCoy is unyielding. “Which means you don’t know what you _don’t_ want. Negative emotions are just as important--maybe more important--to consent as positive ones are.” He looks back at the microscope and scowls. “I shouldn’t be letting you help me at all.”

Jim learned quickly that positive emotions don’t always have positive expressions. “You’re not sending me away,” he says sharply. “These are my people and I _am_ going to help you set them free.”

Dr. McCoy’s expression softens. “You did that when you got the distress signal out. But I do believe you, Jim.”

“Okay.” Jim takes a deep breath and makes himself relax. “So if the full thirty are done, are we ready to test them?” 

Dr. McCoy hesitates for a long moment before he answers. Jim knows that he’d rather have a fully equipped research team and specimens for non-human tests and another month to run those tests, but they don’t have any of that. Maybe when the rescue ships get back to Earth Starfleet medical will put their top minds on the problem and they’ll be free in a week… but maybe the bureaucracy of receiving a couple thousand former slaves and more than a hundred criminals who’d enslaved them would slow the process down to years, if it didn’t get forgotten entirely. Jim isn’t willing to take the chance, and neither is Dr. McCoy, which is why he says, “Yeah, we’re ready. Well, they’re ready, if you’re ready.”

“I’m ready,” Jim says firmly. He hops up on the biobed. The lab shouldn’t have a biobed at all--Dr. McCoy’s primary job was research even before Jim and his companions came on board--but the ship’s CMO was sympathetic and had allowed one to be moved. He and Dr. McCoy have since modified this one with a specialized brain scanner. They’ve spent the three weeks since the rescue using it to locate and map the implants in Jim’s brain, and the brains of all the others. 

There are two display screens: one angled for Dr. McCoy to watch and one mounted overhead for Jim. Dr. McCoy may be gruff, but it’s been obvious to Jim from the beginning that there’s a lot more to him than that--he’d installed that second screen without even being asked. His hands are firm as he straps Jim’s head into the braces that will hold it still for the imaging, and when he’s done he absently strokes Jim’s hair off his forehead. Jim has to resist closing his eyes to enjoy the gentle touch, knowing that Dr. McCoy will watch himself more carefully if he becomes aware of it.

“Comfortable?” Dr. McCoy asks, retrieving something from the lab bench that looks like a metal spray bottle.

“Yup,” Jim says, folding his hands over his belly. “Secure?”

“You tell me.”

Jim does his best to squirm; his body moves, but his head doesn’t. Dr. McCoy looks away quickly and Jim allows himself a moment to hope the squirming was appealing. “All secure,” he reports.

“All right, then. These are the nanites,” Dr. McCoy holds up the metal bottle. He taps, but doesn’t press, a button on the side. “Pressing this injects one of the groups into your nasal passages; they’re programmed to find their designated implant from there.” Jim knows this, but it reassures Dr. McCoy to explain stuff like this, so he doesn’t interrupt. “I’ll shoot off each group a few minutes apart, just to make sure they don’t interfere with each other.”

“What if I sneeze?” Jim asks, a smile tugging at his lips.

“They’ll attack the ship and cause a catastrophic chain reaction as they replicate themselves. _Don’t sneeze_ ,” Dr. McCoy says. He’s deadpan, but Jim waits for a second and the poker face cracks into a smile. Jim grins back; he loves Dr. McCoy’s smile. “Sniff hard if you feel the urge,” the doctor advises. “But if you do sneeze, we’ll just monitor the progress of the other groups and make a new set if they work.”

“Okay then, hit me,” Jim says, turning his attention to the monitor.

The screen is divided into six panels, one for each area of the brain hosting an implant. The implants show up as spidery bright spots. They’re only partly metallic, and they’ve used other imaging methods to get a clearer picture, but this is the best option for monitoring the nanite population. 

Dr. McCoy leans over and carefully slides the nozzle of the injector into Jim’s nostril. “Okay, on three. One, two, three--”

He presses the button and Jim sniffs a bit, just in case. He doesn’t feel anything other than the jet of air, of course. The nanites are too small for that. But after only a moment five fast moving bright specks appear on the monitor. They reach the first implant in under a minute and everything seems to halt.

“You shouldn’t feel anything, so _tell me_ if you notice any changes at all,” Dr. McCoy says. “I have a transmitter that can kill them immediately if there are any signs that they’re attacking neurological tissue instead of the implants.”

“I feel fine,” Jim says absently, watching the screen. “They don’t seem to be doing anything.”

Dr. McCoy pats his arm reassuringly. “It’s going to take them almost an hour to dismantle the implant; there won’t be a visible change for a while yet. The biobed is registering progress. Ready for another set?”

“I’m good to go,” Jim assures him.

The other five sets of nanites are injected with no incident, sneezes or otherwise. With a few minutes pause in between each injection, it takes long enough to finish the application that Jim can see a change in the first implant. The “legs” of the spidery shape are noticeably shorter. “They _are_ working,” he says. A tension he hadn’t even realized was there bled out of him.

“I told you they were,” Dr. McCoy says, but he pulls up a chair next to Jim and rests a warm hand over his wrist. Jim carefully doesn’t look at Dr. McCoy as he carefully shifts his hand until their fingers are lightly interlaced, keeping his eyes on the monitor instead. His care is rewarded: the doctor doesn’t pull his hand away.

They watch in silence as the nanites work. There’s so much that Jim wants to say, but it’s all better saved until after the implants are gone. He’s not sure why Dr. McCoy is so quiet; maybe he’s just focused on the nanites’ progress.

It takes another hour after the last injection before the sixth and final set of nanites turn on each other and begin disassembling themselves so that Jim’s natural brain processes will flush them out. “Are the implants completely gone now?” Jim asks quietly. He doesn’t feel different.

“They should be, but let’s run a test to be sure,” Dr. McCoy says carefully.

It occurs to Jim, as Dr. McCoy turns to the biobed’s control unit, that he can run a test of his own. Obedience is a part of the implants, and there’s one order that he’s been dying to break: _Call me Dr. McCoy._

When they’d been introduced, he’d said his name was Leonard. 

_Leonard,_ Jim thinks. It doesn’t feel right, but he doesn’t think that’s the implants. The name just doesn’t suit the man. “Leonard,” Jim tries aloud.

“Hmmmm?” Leonard is distracted by the test he’s running.

“Is that what people call you? Leonard? Leo? Len?” Jim tries, but none of them seem to fit.

“Honestly, I’m not sure when someone last called me anything but Dr. McCoy,” Leonard says dryly. He turns back to Jim and smiles as he leans over him to unstrap his head. “Congratulations, you’re implant free.”

When the last strap releases, Jim sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the biobed. “No room for error?”

“There’s always room for error,” Leonard says, infuriatingly. (That’s a good sign.) “But none of my tests are saying anything else.”

“So my feelings are my own?” Jim presses. 

Leonard nods. “They are.”

“You’re _certain_?” 

“Right down to my bones,” Dr. McCoy says, exasperated.

Jim beams. “That’s perfect! Bones.”

Leonard quirks an eyebrow. “Bones?”

“That’s what I’m going to call you,” Jim says. “Leonard just doesn’t suit you.”

“And what’s wrong with ‘Dr. McCoy’?”

Jim smiles, feeling mischievous. “I’m not going to call you ‘Dr. McCoy’ when I do this.” He reaches out, grabs the front of Bones’s shirt, and pulls him in close enough for a kiss. His mouth is still, startled, under Jim’s, but that’s okay. Jim was expecting that, so he keeps the kiss short and finishes it off with a teasing nip.

When Jim leans back, keeping a hold of Bones, Bones’s eyes are wide. “Jim, you--”

“My feelings are my own, right?” Jim interrupts.

Bones nods.

“Right. So here’s what I’m feeling.” He holds Bones’s gaze. “I like you. I _trust_ you. And before you argue that that’s because all my negative feelings were being suppressed, I promise that the idea you might not let me kiss you again is _terrifying_.” The fear really hits him once he says it, and the fingers fisted in Bones’s shirt spasm with the rush of it.

Bones reaches up and covers Jim’s hand with his own, but instead of prying it away, he closes his fingers around Jim’s fist, his grip warm and firm. “I’m going to let you kiss me again,” he says softly. “I’m even going to kiss you back.”

Jim lets out a quick breath and grins briefly before pulling Bones back in for that second kiss. It’s infinitely better with Bones kissing back. He’s not an expert kisser--Jim and his companions were all taught to be expert kissers--but that just makes Jim like it better. It’s honest, and it starts off teasingly tentative and quickly warms into eager as it goes on. Eventually, Bones presses closer, right between Jim’s knees, and Jim lets go of his shirt in favor of putting his hands on Bones’s hips.

He’s not sure how long they spend just kissing, but it’s long enough that his mouth is feeling a bit abused, in a truly delicious way, by the time Bones pulls away and rests his forehead against Jim’s. “As much as I’d like to keep doing that,” he says, “we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

Jim sighs regretfully, because Bones is right. They need to develop a program so that one of the ships with nanite production hardware can make them, and they need to hand craft a whole lot more nanites so that they can demonstrate to the Captains and CMOs of those ships that the nanites work and are worth producing. “I know. But if you work late, I’m _staying_.”

“And if I go back to my quarters,” Bones says, licking his lips quickly, “you’ll come with me?”

A flush of _want_ rushes through Jim. “You bet I will.”

“Well, then.” Bones slowly steps back from Jim and grins. “We’ve got some work to do before the end of shift.” 

Jim hops off the biobed and grins back. It’s going to be a long shift, but right now he really doesn’t care.

\--End--


End file.
